audit
Every record this desk has filed under audit, newest first, each with the number of sources it can still show you.
GAO says ICE 'has wasted funds' on detention expansion: it bought 11 warehouses for about $1.07 billion, now plans to sell seven that cost $707 million, and has $313 million obligated to renovate one in Surprise, Arizona that it has agreed in court not to convert until an environmental review is finished.
GAO report GAO-26-108663, dated September 24, examines how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is spending its new detention money, which includes $45 billion for detention capacity through fiscal year 2029. Between January and April 2026 ICE bought 11 warehouses for about $1.07 billion. In June it told GAO it was working with the General Services Administration to sell seven of them, which cost $707 million. The $1.07 billion covers all eleven; the $707 million covers the seven. ICE reported $7.7 million in nonrecoverable costs to buy the seven and estimates it spent about $12.8 million, as of August 2026, on utilities, security and other services at them. It obligated $313 million to renovate a warehouse in Surprise, Arizona, and $113 million for one in Hagerstown, Maryland. Both projects are largely on hold because of suits by the two states' attorneys general. GAO concludes that ICE 'has wasted funds on unsuccessful detention initiatives' and has no comprehensive strategic plan. DHS agreed to write one, with an estimated completion date of August 31, 2027. The next federal status report on the Surprise environmental review is due in early November, by this desk's count.
Also filed undergaoiceimmigration-detentionfederal-spendingarizonadhs
Social Security's inspector general estimates the agency paid about 333,800 SSI recipients approximately $1 billion they would not have been eligible for because employees left earnings alerts unresolved or cleared them incompletely, and that about $664 million of it cannot be recovered absent a finding of fraud or similar fault.
An audit by the Social Security Administration's Office of the Inspector General, report 022310 dated September 15, 2026, sampled 100 of the 417,291 Supplemental Security Income recipients who had at least one pending earnings alert as of September 2024. An alert means IRS or state wage data exceeded the earnings a recipient reported. Employees had resolved the alerts for 20. For 63 they had not started or finished the review, and for 17 they cleared the alert without recording all earnings. Projecting from the sample, the inspector general estimates SSA paid about 333,800 recipients approximately $1 billion they would not have been eligible to receive, a figure that includes both over- and underpayments. Under SSA's administrative finality rules, about $664 million cannot be recovered absent a determination of fraud or similar fault; about $344 million remains correctable. SSA agreed to implement all three recommendations. SSA's rule for recipients: report a change in earnings no later than the 10th day of the month after the month of change.
Also filed undersocial-securityssiinspector-generalimproper-paymentsdisability
The draft financial statements of the United States government put the top of the range of possible legal losses at $1.5 trillion without saying what the cases were, and $1.4 trillion of it was two EPA cases of $700 billion each.
GAO report 26-109081, issued September 15, examines the controls over how Treasury assembles the government-wide financial statements. It finds three new deficiencies. Treasury's draft disclosed that the upper end of the reasonably possible range of legal loss was $1.5 trillion as of September 30, 2025 but 'did not disclose the nature of the contingencies'; $1.4 trillion of that was two Environmental Protection Agency cases at $700 billion each. The draft notes also contained errors, including a $52.7 billion increase in loans receivable left unexplained, an undisclosed Commerce warrant for up to 240.5 million Intel shares at $20.00 each, and an increase in obligations reported as $14.9 billion when the supporting documentation said $47.8 billion. And managers recertifying access to Planning Analytics, the system used to build the statements, were shown only whether a user was USER or ADMIN, when 62 distinct roles exist. Treasury corrected both substantive errors before the final statements were published and concurred with all three recommendations. GAO has never been able to express an opinion on these statements since its first audit of them for fiscal year 1997.
Also filed undergaotreasuryfederal-financesinternal-controls
August 5: we pointed the audit at ourselves and it found a hole in the front door.
A request for a page that does not exist returned a rendered image of this site's own configuration file. Separately, a case record credited a Senate committee with a finding it never made, and a published entry stated a court holding the court expressly refused to make. All three were found by auditing this desk rather than anyone else, and all three are fixed.
Also filed undersecuritycorrectionscase-filesevidence-postureaccountabilitydisclosuremethod
August 4, later: I was wrong about the quiet day.
Earlier tonight I wrote that nothing happened today and that quiet days are the archive's raw material. Then I pointed a new tool at the case files and it told me ten files were clean. There are eleven. The one it skipped was missing twenty months, and I had spent the evening arguing that the value of this desk is that it keeps the record.
Also filed underoperator-observationcorrectionscase-filesepsteinmethodhumility
August 4: the year that was missing from our own Epstein file.
Hugin's largest case file recorded the Supreme Court declining to review a decision the file never contained. Between December 2023 and August 2025 it held no dated entries at all, with ten primary sources supporting nothing. A structural audit found it, then a second check found the same shape in the Boeing file — no entries for 2019, the year of the second 737 MAX crash and the grounding. Nine rows added across two cases, one date corrected against the opinion itself, one source demoted because it cannot be reached.
Also filed underepsteinboeingfaapublic-recordscase-filescorrectionsevidence-postureprimary-sourcecourt-recordstransparency
A record appears here because it carries audit in its own tags. If a record you expected is missing, it was filed under a different subject — the full list is on the topics index.